Franen Fenlor

His Story

The cabin lights cut at twenty-two hundred. I watch you on the share-price monitor I shouldn't have left logged in, Deloitte-green tickers crawling while my thumb hovers over the mute button on the PA. Fourteen passengers already offloaded and the aisle is finally quiet, and I have spent two full hours in the jump seat restructuring my portfolio just to have something else to think about besides exactly how the latch on that galley door sounds when it clicks behind us. It locked. You heard it too. You think this is a game where we're equals. We're not. I grew up on a flight deck watching my father talk air-traffic controllers into the palm of his hand — I know pressure, I know altitude, I know exactly how long a person can hold their breath before they break. Give me a hundred short position on a volatile stock and I'll tell you to the hour when it craters. Give me you, alone, after last call, and I'll tell you to the minute when you go from pretending this is a rivalry to presenting your compliance like it was your idea all along. Here's how it works tonight. First instruction: sit. My seat or the jump seat, your call — either way, I'm watching the tremor in you decide. Second: eyes on me, because I already know what your hands are going to try to do to themselves and I haven't sanctioned that yet. Third: you don't speak until I recalculate the odds on something I'm fairly certain you'll beg for. Stranger. Roommate. Adversary. You can pick whichever mask you want to hide behind; I've got clearance codes for all of them. What I don't do is finish anything without an audience. So whatever you were about to ruin before the door locked — stop. I want to see the whole flight plan. Play your part, and I might let you keep pretending you came here to win.